The Headbang Gang 2.0 - Raging Spirits madness - now with cheap version + leveling guide

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MatrixFactor wrote:

Madcow: how are you getting 3.7k HP and 1.1k free mana at L75 with your gear?

For leveling I suggest a 4L searing touch. Put SRS in it, then add multistrike, melee phys, and added fire/minion damage/faster casting/echo. Somewhere else in your gear put a searing bond- inc burning (- fire pen - item rarity). Easily gets you to 65, and you can transition easily whenever you feel your spirits are doing enough damage.

Also I've been playing a variant of this build. I suggest melee splash over increased duration for most content, and swap in inc dur for splash toughish boss fights.

that's my farming gear. I have about 3K with that gear.

this gives me 3.7


my tree


although I started to try out the +3 gems 5L staff I have. It drops me to about 3.5K hp (because I lose the shield) and my resists are subpar (again shield) so I'll need to jumble some stuff around. Until then I run purity but goal is to have resits covered from gear for more mana.

I ran a courtyard map with that staff, 3.5K hp and only 600 mana unreserved and ate it twice to the leap slammer boss. I did run with a friend using molten strike. I do believe he proc'd EE first which would made it much tougher. This I plan to fix when I switch my gear around to cover resists, hopefully boost HP and will have more mana available. Also, my fault for not kiting more or impressing on him to wait a moment for my blind balls totem to hit.

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sherkhan wrote:

Couple of replies:

Multistrike. Sorry, yes - the math agrees with you guys. I was wrong about the incremental mana cost, and the worry about lower physical damage.

Melee Physical on Full Life. I've been watching the bars, and it seems binary - if the minion dies, it does, but otherwise it's on full life (note: it can't be targeted, and doesn't get hit cept by AOE dmg).

Increased Duration. Looking at some curves, I realize that all increased duration does (vs a dmg gem) is get similar DPS at a slower ramp up. i.e. if you have duration of 5s, it'll take you 5s to get to your peak DPS, if you have duration of 8s, it'll take 8s to reach peak DPS. My takeaway from this is that it's worth getting 45% from the tree, but it's better to save the gem slots for damage. More duration does give you the utility of running to kite, but otherwise it slows clears.

Ideal non-empower (read GGG should have showcased this build anyway) setup (in order of importance)

Echo + Multistrike + Melee Physical Damage + Melee Physical Damage on Full + Minion Damage

3B 3R also opens up your chest options, in case there's a better end-game defense setup than MoM (maybe Belly of the Beast?).

At the moment, I'm only considering running Haste + Hatred + Clarity. Groups are fun, but I usually run solo.

I wouldn't use 'melee on full life' because they are susceptible to AoE damage. Any tiny amount and you lose the power of that gem. You can't see all of their health especially with so much going on to know it will be effective. That gem is really only for CI.

Increased Duration. You are missing one big positive from that. You not only have longer lasting spirits which means more hits per second for the group (that's dps) but also MORE spirits active at once. That becomes a multiplier after initial ramp up.

Also, indirectly it will allow you extra time to kite as your spirits may be active that much longer.

I'd suggest that if you really wanted another gem that is DPS and you rule out increased duration I'd try Added Fire since it works the same way Hatred does and we know Hatred works well.

The chest option isn't really open at all. Cloak of Defiance is used for the damage mitigation of Mind over Matter. It's stronger than the passive that would otherwise require a long reach to obtain. The only other chest option for a build like this would likely be Lightning Coil. However, the coil is EV/AR so getting enough blue sockets would be a pain.

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PepprmintButler wrote:

I just uploaded a quick video of my stupid CoC Raging Spirits build I was talking about here a bit earlier, check it out if you're so inclined : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9IZ16n70NA

Also, from reddit :

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quarl wrote:

We did look at your build, and one of the reasons we said "there are other raging spirit builds on the forum" is to highlight ones like yours.

Highlighting a build with a +3 staff is a bit risky for us, as players may look at that and assume they can build something the same very easily. (We often get criticism based on the ability for players to emulate a build)

We do like your build, and it was considered, [...]

I'm not too salty anymore :3

that video looked like a lot of fun.

I have a moltenstrike build I made when the gem came out that was pretty darn strong with block/spell block using doryani's catalyst and crest of perandus with stone of lazhwar (which is corrupted but nothing happened).

I have a duelist that's level 77 sitting in standard that still has it's respec open. Maybe I'll respec it into this for fun since I already have the gems and gear except a corrupted BoR. My buddy will lend me his regular BoR though. Take out GMP put CoC I suppose. What do you think I should aim for? Same spec you got or roll into templar area?

from duelist I'd run down the attack speed/proj damage/acceleration nodes and have to give up some little things I suppose. I have a couple daggers at 9+% and an ungils or two for fun.
Otherwise maybe this (I am not sure how many points I have to spend offhand)

Oh, Point Blank works very well with Molten Strike as does Iron Grip (50% more damage for projectiles).

this would be templar side. Hard to find crit there. Low mana reservation

or this


I go on vacation in about a week and half so really it's just for giggles and I get the respec again soon after.

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sherkhan wrote:

AOE damage is pretty rare, and a lot of it is ground based (e.g. burning ground, chaos). Added Fire could work, but it wouldn't scale the 50% fire nor the 55% cold dmg from Hatred.


The MORE spirits comes at the cost of LESS damaging spirits. I did the math - essentially it's a ramp up vs utility (being able to move around) tradeoff.


How do you feel about this tree? It's low on HP, but could work without CoD.

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBAuMHYwelCPQOXBB0EZYVIBbzFy8Y2xmFGYYZihpsGo8c3B2qHb4elCQ8JKoksCY8J6ko-imlKk0s6S9vL5026TyOPydFfkWdRnFJUUmySshOKlXWVi1XK1fJWW1abVqRW69fmGTnaqxr220Zb55wu3NTdPF5A3qqfRh_xoCkgh6Cx4MJhTKG0ZMnmK2a4Ju1na6io6aspwinXKh9rD-sR6x_tAy4k8BUwfPDOspK0_vVgdkT2wvcV90N4Yjjauq66yzr7uyK89322vno-tL7Cf5J

The massive loss in Life to 128% on tree (I have 182% and that even feels a bit low) is not worth the reach for a lesser version of MoM on the tree and dropping cloak. On the tree MoM gives 30% reduction. Cloak gives 40%. You're also giving up what you're looking for which is minion damage. Death Attunement is a large boost.

I don't know how to get the aura usage, life and MoM on the tree. I do think it's a choice between 2 of 3 and with an easy option to pick up MoM on gear it's an easy decision.


The AoE damage is an issue. Enemies like cyclone guy in cemetary map or sea witches with aoe cold or piety's lightning ball or the shooters in lunaris or dom lightning bugs/cold cannons can kill the spirits fast. These are the trouble makers and melee on full life will do nothing for them.

I currently use spirits - minion damage - multistrike - echo - melee physical. I am thinking about remove melee physical for increased duration. (at least to test). Less damage with more sources of damage.

Really though, these just need to be tested and ultimately it's what feels most comfortable and of course what works. It's hard to test the full damage gem since trash mobs are easy to kill anyhow and you can't when it's operating. I figure any chance for it not to be up when I need it means there is a better option.

You could do both and use it for most of a map then swap it for a boss that you know will AoE the spirits.

Playing this in the 1 month race and I have quick question.

If you could only afford one of the support gems Spell Echo or Multistrike, which would be the better choice to buy for an increase of DPS for the SRS?

Which is better 5L

SRS; Echo; Multistrike; Melee Splash; Minion Damage

or

SRS; Echo; Multistrike; Melee Splash; Inc. Duration

or is there a better 5L?

I have a 5L ES chest, so getting more reds may be hard.

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kenmai9 wrote:

Which is better 5L

SRS; Echo; Multistrike; Melee Splash; Minion Damage

or

SRS; Echo; Multistrike; Melee Splash; Inc. Duration

or is there a better 5L?

I have a 5L ES chest, so getting more reds may be hard.

I suggest SRS Echo MS Melee Physical damage and swap splash/duration based on whether youre fighting a boss or normal mobs.

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I actually really like Sherkhan's MoFL idea. Easy to test it for yourself vs. added fire. Things like increased duration, added fire, and melee splash are ones you either have to trust others' experiences or test for yourself. Hard to do it analytically.

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MatrixFactor wrote:

I actually really like Sherkhan's MoFL idea. Easy to test it for yourself vs. added fire. Things like increased duration, added fire, and melee splash are ones you either have to trust others' experiences or test for yourself. Hard to do it analytically.

I'm nowhere near endgame yet, but I am not too sold on the MoFL gem idea. As mentioned there is the AoE worry, but also pretty much any ranged mob will render the gem useless. The spirits may not be able to be targeted (which is debatable, I think. Even though the devs stated as much, I have seen mobs just attacking the batch of spirits in front of them and not coming after me at all when I am the only targetable thing in their range), the ranged mobs will still shoot their ranged attacks/spells at you and hit the spirits that are surrounding them and remove a chunk of life, making the gem null.

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iCrucifix wrote:

Playing this in the 1 month race and I have quick question.

If you could only afford one of the support gems Spell Echo or Multistrike, which would be the better choice to buy for an increase of DPS for the SRS?

In a vacuum I would pick multistrike, considering you can make do with faster casting in place of echo. If choosing the merc library quest reward though, I would definitely pick echo as it's significantly more valuable. You could get a multistrike + a couple of chaos out of it.
So : buy multistrike if you can, use faster casting and switch to echo once you get to merc library.

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MatrixFactor wrote:

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kenmai9 wrote:

Which is better 5L

SRS; Echo; Multistrike; Melee Splash; Minion Damage

or

SRS; Echo; Multistrike; Melee Splash; Inc. Duration

or is there a better 5L?

I have a 5L ES chest, so getting more reds may be hard.

I suggest SRS Echo MS Melee Physical damage and swap splash/duration based on whether youre fighting a boss or normal mobs.

That's optimal, but possibly hard to acheive with a pure int chest. You could do SRS Echo Minion Damage Multistrike Melee Phys for keeping the reds at 2, and the results should be quite close.
Once at endgame with good cast speed and maintaining a dozen or more spirits out, melee splash is just largely unnecessary. It's very useful early game, but I would drop it around mid-merciless.